Nowadays, your site must be listed in Google — one of the most important crawler-based search engines. Not only do most people use it for search, but it also provides results for other major sites.

Submission to Google is easy — you need only submit your home page. Other pages, linked from the home page, are then added to Google’s database over time.

In fact, you don’t actually have to submit your site to Google (Google prefers that you don’t). It may well find your site anyway; especially if another site (already in Google) has links to your site.

To get a top ranking in Google, here are my four keys to success.

LINK POPULARITY

Link Popularity is more than just about how many sites link to you. It’s how and whom you link with that also plays a factor. The more links you can get to your site, the better. But I would rather have less links on more popular and relevant sites than tons of links on unknown pages.

Try and link with related sites. When the Google spider visits your site from a site that links to yours, it analyzes this process. For example, let’s say you have a radio show site like I do and you have links on a bunch of game sites. When Google follows these links from game sites, they are looking for some kind of a theme. What in the world does a game site have to do with a radio Web site? Not much. Therefore, while you might get a small boost, it does not help as much as linking to related sites, where Google can see some kind of theme. If you have a radio site and Google finds that a bunch of other radio sites have linked to you, then they are thinking you must have a relevant site about radio stuff! Make sense?

I prefer text links. When other Web sites use words in the link that point to your site, the Google spider reads them. So, if sites linking to you use keywords in their link text, Google may increase your ranking for those words. As an example, I have a Web site about the actor James Spader ( http://www.JamesSpader.org ) which is about his movies and TV work. When sites link to it, I would prefer them to use “Movies and Videos of James Spader” in the links text pointing to the URL JamesSpader.org. A less desirable way would be both JamesSpader.org in the link text and URL. This is just a small way to boost your relevance and theme, but every little bit can help.

Lastly, a listing in the Yahoo directory and http://www.DMOZ.com (the Open Directory) will give you a big boost. I have personally seen greatly increased rankings after a listing in DMOZ for some of my sites.

SITE TITLE

Use keywords in your title and keywords that people are searching for. From the example above, If your site is called JamesSpader.org, don’t just put that in your title. What is your site all about and what would people search for to find it? On this site I use “James Spader Audio, Video, Pictures, Music Videos and Fan Fiction” for the title on the home page. I recommend keeping it to 8 words or less. On subsequent pages, I tailor the title to reflect the content. “James Spader images from the movie ‘Secretary’” is a title that reflects words that a searcher might type in Google.

DOMAIN NAME

While some people dispute this claim, I find your domain name to be important in Google, and a number of other search engines and directories. While doing a search in Google for “James Spader,” my site comes right up, ranked number two of 1.5 million results. My domain is my keyword. Not bad, huh?

KEYWORD PLACEMENT

Use your top keywords (particularly the ones used in your title) towards the top of the page. Continue to use these keywords throughout the page, in your link text and URLs, but don’t overdo it.

OTHER TIPS

— Use your top keywords throughout your site to help build that “theme” which I was talking about above.

— Google does not use keyword “tags,” although a couple search engines still use them, so I use them anyway on some pages.

— Links farms do not work and may get you banned. These, by the way, are pages devoted to hundreds of links only.

— Have content: Following the tips above, but only having a sentence or two on your site, will not get you good listings.

If you follow the steps above, I am confident your rankings in Google will improve. Remember, good rankings don’t happen over night and may require some work and time, but the payoff can be great! So, it’s time to get Googled!